Dick Lahn gave his time and his heart to improving the local environment, civil life and economy by stirring the brighter angels of our nature.
Lahn died at home on Thanksgiving Day. He was 76 years old. The community will gather to celebrate Lahn’s life Sunday at the Annapolis Maritime Museum.
The Crofton resident was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in October.
Long an activist in environmental and local issues, he is best known for his effort to honor land preservation in the Chesapeake Bay watershed – The Chesapeake String of Pearls.
It was a virtually single-handed effort to honor the landowners and their land – the pearls – put into permanent preservation, precluding development and helping stem the tide of development’s impact on the bay.
To those who worked with him over the years, he was a gem himself. A gentle and quiet leader who worked tirelessly, yet deflected the limelight to others.
“Rather than take credit, Dick was always looking for ways to build others up; to acknowledge with gratitude the efforts of others,” said Suzanne Etgen, executive director of the Anne Arundel Watershed Stewards Academy.
“Dick led with humility, focusing on a vision of people working together to make change. His way was to exude so much love and gratitude toward people doing good things that we just could not help but do more of those good things.”
That was also the driving force behind the String of Pearls project, honoring others doing good works.
“It is about the balance between preservation and development,” Lahn told The Capital in 2016. “We don’t know where the ideal balance lies, but we do know that protecting and preserving land is the ultimate answer because what happens to the bay is a result of what happens on the land.”
The project consists of a registry of people and properties in the Chesapeake Watershed that have been preserved and protected from development in perpetuity. The registry of the “pearls” is on display at the Anne Arundel County Circuit Courthouse in Annapolis.
His friend of 50 years, former Clerk of the Court Robert Duckworth, served on the String of Pearls board.
“He was dedicated to making the community and the earth a better place. And he left this earth a better place for his efforts,” Duckworth said.
Elvia Thompson, founder of Annapolis Green, admired Lahn’s passion about everything.
“Every day was a new day,” Thompson said. “Once he came up with an idea he would not stop talking about it. It pulled everybody in. He infected them with his ideas and really moved people to take action.”
Lahn was one of the founding 100 donators to Annapolis Green. “But it was way more than the money, he gave us so many ideas.”
Former state delegate and longtime friend Marsha Perry mourned the loss.
“I just know that Dick is someone who made my life in Crofton so much better. We both went to Cornell, served on the Crofton Community Association board together… but, his passion was put into his founding and the work he did for his String of Pearls Dream.”
She urged people to step up to continue the effort.
‘Tenacious, yet soft’
Lahn’s wife, Elaine, stricken by the rapid loss, said he accomplished his goals despite difficulties, both physical and psychological.
“He was diagnosed with manic-depression but learned to live with it,” she said.
She thought part of his stubborn drive to accomplish his ideas was partially due to the manic side of him.
Despite that he won over people with his core beliefs and tenacious, yet soft approach, she said.
“His religion was two things, action and kindness,” Lahn said. “He led by example. He was an action guy, not a talk-about-it guy. Everything he did, he did in a kind way. If he had to say something harsh he would figure out a nice way to say it.”
Lahn’s daughter, Etta, said her father believed in being a responsible member of society. He believed what he did mattered and he took responsibility for participating in society.
She said he also had a knack for seeing “the superpower in others, to see what they were good at, the gifts they had. And he supported other people’s gifts.”
Etgen has been reflecting over the past several days. With the recent loss of another environmental leader, Kincey Potter, and others, Etgen wondered, “Who do we go to now? These were our sages, our guides.
“The answer is us. We have to be that.’”
Passion for environment
Richard “Dick” Lahn, was born in Harlem, N.Y., on Aug. 2, 1942 to Jack and Mary Newman. His father was a foreign correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, and the separation of foreign coverage led to divorce. His mother re-married Jackson Lahn, a Naval Academy graduate.
After attending Cornell, for which he garnered the nickname, “Ivy,” he then graduated from Drew University. Lahn moved to the Washington, D.C., area to work on satellites and rockets as a systems analyst for NASA-Goddard.
Dick Lahn memorial
A Celebration of Life for Dick Lahn will be held Sunday, 4:30-7:30 p.m. at the Annapolis Maritime Museum, 723 2nd St. in Annapolis.
He developed a passion for environmental issues and became a lobbyist for the Sierra Club in the 1970s, working on preventing nuclear testing in Alaska, strip mining and energy policy. He was a co-founder of the National Clean Air Coalition, which sought to expand the Clean Air Act. He earned a Sierra Club Lifetime Achievement Award.
He then spent 22 years as a project manager at the U.S. Department of Justice, Land and Natural Resources Division, before retiring in 2000.
After retiring, he rededicated his attention to the environment, both near and far.
Locally, he fought big box development in Crofton and was active in Crofton First. Then, he founded the String of Pearls Project.
On a more global note he was a founder and served on the board of the Rivers of the World Foundation, which has worked to clean up rivers in India, the Philippines, China, Nepal, Tennessee, and locally.
But the environment was not his only thing.
He fought for racial justice with the local chapter of the NAACP, wrote a nearly uncountable amount of letters to the editor and was involved in electoral politics on both a local and national level, including last month’s election, despite his illness.
In 2000, he founded the Annapolis Sustainable Business Alliance to promote and nurture local, living economies, and was closely involved in the Annapolis city government. He was all in, even donning a bumble bee costume to encourage people to “Bee Local.”
Dick lived in Crofton for almost 50 years and in 2008 was named Crofton Citizen of the Year for his participation in the community.
He loved hiking and canoeing the mountains and rivers of West Virginia with family and friends, attending live music events, including the Grateful Dead. He was a student of yoga, attending “hot yoga” up to four times a week, sometimes to the dismay of family and physicians, and sunrise yoga at the Annapolis City Dock.
He is survived by his wife of 52 years, Elaine Lahn, son Dave and daughter, etta cetera, two sisters-in-law, Mikki Foster and Rosanne Schade, three nieces and cousins.
Donations can be made in honor of Dick Lahn to Future History Now – the Annapolis based community-building nonprofit that creates murals with young people. http://futurehistorynow.org/.
Stay tuned as the String of Pearls organization regroups.
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